English sides must improve in Europe, says Ferguson

Sir Alex Ferguson believes that English teams must raise their standards to remain competitive in the Champions League.

A team from the Premier League has featured in the final of the tournament in six of the last seven years, but now three of the four teams who qualified for this season’s edition of the competition are fighting to qualify from the group stage.

Arsenal have managed to confirm top spot in Group F and will go through irrespective of their result against Olympiakos. But Manchester City, Chelsea and Manchester United are still battling for the right to continue into the last 16.

“There are some strong teams out there now, I think we may have to bring our game up a little bit and make sure we don’t underestimate the group stages,” said Manchester United manager Ferguson.

“We should have won our home game against Basel and because we didn’t we now need to go there and make sure they don’t beat us. We could find our casualness in the first game costs us.”

Roberto Mancini’s men are relying on outside help, as they need Napoli not to beat Villarreal in the final game of the group stage.

Chelsea and Manchester United take on Valencia and Basel respectively, with the winner of each game certain to progress.

Now the Scot believes that the spending in other parts of Europe has seen some clubs grow in strength, putting forward a challenge to those that have regularly played in the knockout stage.

“You can see the amount of money that some of the Russian teams are spending and the number of Brazilians they have playing for them now,” he said.

“Then you notice that Apoel Nicosia have qualified already, they are funded by a wealthy guy. I think they have only three Cypriot players, the rest are from other countries. And of course there’s the team (Anzhi Makhachkala of Dagestan) that lives in Moscow but play a four-hour plane journey away. Their owner has just built them a brand new stadium, complete with all the roads leading up to it.”

“There is certainly some money around in the game, and over time it is bound to make a difference. It represents a different challenge for teams from this country.”